Committee for the Promotion of Public Awareness and Development Studies

The efforts of COPPADES, as a social development organization, are directed towards ensuring acceptable living situation to the people in rural communities in Nepal. These efforts are related with eliminating discriminations based on caste, gender and ethnicity that are crippling the lives of many people in the country. The situation is perpetuated by the lack of education for women and children, the prevailing situation of the lack of employment opportunities resulting into extreme poverty, and the inadequate law enforcement situation that has marginalized the people in the rural communities. The rights of long discriminated women and the Dalits have not improved and the girl children are treated as second grade individuals, always put on low priority. The situation has spilled over to the degradation fragile natural resources causing risks of disaster and other vulnerabilities induced by climate change and environmental degradation as those are the ones that are forced to eke out their living through dependence on fragile natural landscape.

COPPADES has a vision to contribute to the making of an equitable society that guarantees social justice. COPPADES wants to make sure that men and women, boys and girls are treated equally and that poverty does not persist on the basis of discriminations impacting negatively on the access to information and opportunities. We strive to make sure that people are empowered to improve their lives, they are able to organize themselves to achieve their common goals and are able to use their constitutional rights as citizens and that children are duly cared and loved and prepared to express their potentials.

Education being the foremost important thing COPPADES’s priority is to provide educational opportunities to girls and boys in the rural areas. Since the educational opportunities vary between rural and urban children and between poor and better off, the challenge is to bring quality education to people those in the rural communities where people are poor. Education for children is closely linked with the economic situation of their parents. COPPADES is helping people through the promotion of community based cooperatives, among others. Savings and Credit Cooperatives not only empower people through their organizational character they assist people to make savings, get necessary capital for income earning enterprise and encouraging their members to pursue income generation activities. COPPADES intends to equip rural schools with learning materials and equipment such as the provision of the Internet access, computer labs and learning software programs. To assist their parents economically, we intend to build the capacities of cooperatives through technology support and managerial skill training.

As girls are given low priority in opportunities compared to boys, the school drop-out rate is higher among girls compared to boys. Whenever there is a need for household work assistance it is the girl that is required to give up the school. Hence, the percentage of girls graduating to higher education is very low. Also because of the preference for arranged marriage girls have little say on who they want to get married with. Once married, often it becomes the end of their school life. The result is, there are married women who are unable to complete any formal degree limiting their ability to try for employment opportunities. We intend to change this situation by helping such drop outs who are unable to secure any formal degree, and often have one or more children, to rejoin the customized training courses so that they can get back to the formal school systems and eventually secure an employable degree.

Dalit women are in double disadvantage. They are discriminated against as lower caste and additionally they are discriminated against as women. COPPADES intends to help such Dalit girls through scholarship support so that they can get school education and eventually get on to higher education. They can become the propellers for educational opportunities for other girls from the communities. Also it is important that they are assisted in advocating their equal rights as citizens of the country. COPPADES has been doing such support and would like to continue these activities in the future.

Nepali youths have been traveling abroad for employment, mainly to gulf countries like Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other countries like South Korea and Malaysia. For lack of specific skills they are bound to do menial, risky and low pay jobs with low salaries. Those that have technical skills such as driving, operating certain types of machinery, masonry and other construction skills have access to higher pay and more advantageous job situation. Most youths go for such often unwanted jobs while there are possibilities in the country itself. COPPADES plans to provide skill related training for youths such as in agriculture and industrial area so that they can remain and find better employment within the country, and even if they go to foreign country, they can get better employment opportunities. COPPADES wants to provide such training to youths to enhance their technical capacities.

The issue of good governance has been a cross cutting theme for COPPADES’ program activities. Sensitizing the community people in their rights to public resources and services has been our expertise through work experience. COPPADES will continue to operate effectively in making community people aware of the ongoing situation – locally and nationally and empower them to respond appropriately in due time. The sensitization activities will be on the rights of children, rights of women, monitoring of social security benefits for seniors and disabled, and monitoring the use of public resources and budget expenditures of local government bodies.

Any fund that would be available for COPPADES will be used for bringing positive changes in the areas explained above.

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